Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/338

298 the In and Yō not yet divided. They formed a chaotic mass like an egg which was of obscurely defined limits and contained germs. The purer and clearer part was thinly-diffused and formed heaven, while the heavier and grosser element settled down and became earth. The finer element easily became a united body, but the consolidation of the heavy and gross element was accomplished with difficulty. Heaven was therefore formed first, and Earth established subsequently. Thereafter divine beings were produced between them."

Next after this rationalistic essay we find the names, and little more, of a number of deities, intended apparently to provide a genealogy for Izanagi and Izanami, the twin creator-deities of Japanese myth. There is much confusion here among the different authorities, both in respect to the names of these deities and to the order of their birth. Some are never heard of again, and look like mere inventions of an individual fancy, but others were really worshipped in later times. Of their attributes and functions little or nothing is known beyond what may be gathered from their names. There is the "Land-eternal-stand-deity" (according to the Nihongi, the first of all the gods), the "Rich-formation-plain-deity," "Sweet-reed-shoot-prince-elder-deity" (described as resembling a reed-shoot, and produced from the earth when it was young and floated about like oil floating on water), the "Heaven-august-centre-master-deity" (identified by Hirata with the Polar Star), the "High-august-growth-deity," the "Mud-earth-deity," the "Face-perfect-deity," the "Awful deity," the "Eighty-myriad-spirit-deity" the "Celestial-mirror-deity," &c. Most of these are nature deities, and some are evidently the gods of an agricultural community.

Japanese myth really begins with Izanagi and Izanami, whom the various accounts agree in describing as the seventh generation of deities.